OLD: mpdPup - Simplified MPD Music Server/Jukebox - v0.9.2

[ldolse]

On mpdPup you can use nano instead of vi - vi is there of course if you're in love with it, but nano is much more intuitive for a Linux newcomer. Go to the very end of mpd.conf to edit the lines wlowes is referring to.

So type the following at the prompt:

Code: Select all

nano /etc/mpd.conf

Then either scroll to the bottom or hit ctrl-w and enter mpdwizard and search for the first instance which should get you to the bottom.

The lines for buffer_before_play you can put above the mpdwizard comments - the lines for the sound device go below and it should be obvious enough to merge wlowes' suggestion.

I will btw play around with those suggestions and try to figure out what make sense to add into the setup wizards.

I'd forgotten about the suggestions on the Japanese thread - Ideally I'd like those real time patches to be integrated into the main codebase as a configure option - not sure that the author ever attempted to do that, will check the email list. It did remind me that chrt is not available in mpdPup and I've been meaning to add it - time to get that done.

[ldolse]

Other points regarding latency - the first version of mpdPup was on Turbopup which you mentioned, but that was using a very old kernel, so the newer versions are built using the Puppy Linux build system called Woof. The kernel currently in use is 2.6.39-4, and it's got the BFS scheduler patch - so while not a real time kernel it could be considered a low latency kernel with that patch. And then there are a lot of people who argue that kernel latency doesn't really matter for Linux instances as stripped down as these are - I can definitely see their argument, but I'm not really in either camp, will do what is confirmed to sound better.

[PET-240]

Walter,

Trying to figure how you brought up the two bars that showed mute, the command isn't in your post......help!

Thanks,

Drew.

[PET-240]

Never mind........

Though just doing a reboot command, hope it sticks........

[PET-240]

It's alive!

I have a feeling this thing will get loud!

[PET-240]

Am curious, found all that and changed all that, after reboot, it started playing music again according to status leds, however it was re-muted?
Went in, changed to unmute, rebooted, then couldn't reconnect via putty even after several minutes.
Had to turn off. Did the hard reboot, found it, checked the alsa mixer again.......was re-muted?
If I type reboot after exit from alsamixer what am I missing to save permanently?

Thanks,

Drew.

[PET-240]

Idolse,

Be great if we can figure a way to get the front LEDs working, any thoughts? Really hard not knowing when the puppy is booted!

Also, each time I login on putty, it tells me the default password is insecure, even though it is no longer the default password, thoughts?

Thanks.

And it muted again......

[PET-240]

Can a line be added where Walter suggested the other lines in the .conf file to unmute at start up?
Gotta tell you, this will get frustrating having to hook up via putty to play music! And at the moment, it's in a big box cause I have to demo to a mate...
Idolse, have you updated your MPod app as yet? I have two phones here, both working last night, one updated today, now it won't connect, same settings on both...just so you know, no need to cause another issue.
If you don't use a password for mpod, make sure that line is blank, app that makes it argue....
Still can't get album art, and it's there in the folder!

[ldolse]

It's unlikely I can do anything from my side on the LEDs - they're governed by low level hardware functions - if most of them aren't working my gut instinct would be that there is something wrong with the particular board you got.

Nothing in mpd.conf governs how the system starts with mute/unmute - that has to do with the Wave hardware and ALSA. Unfortunately saving ALSA's state to persist across reboots is not what I'd call trivial - the state is stored in memory and the rules about when it gets saved to disk aren't clear.

Try entering the following command after unmuting the sound cards:

Code: Select all

alsactl -f /etc/asound.state store

Then reboot after that and see if it comes up unmuted.

Regarding MPoD, if you had a problem with an upgrade, try deleting the app altogether and then re-installing it - they sometimes have problems on upgrade. Regarding the cover art, you'd need to give me more info - did you follow the instructions I provided several posts back?

The password error is a bug - will be fixed in the next release - if you want to get rid of it you can type the following command:

Code: Select all

rm /root/.ssh/rc

[ldolse]

If you want to know when the system is up, another way to do it is just use ping. Open a windows command prompt, and type:
ping -t tunes.local

or use the IP if tunes.local doesn't work at the windows command line for any reason.

[PET-240]

Heya Idolse,

Just been getting to have a play, have all packed up now again, may be a couple of days, got the app to work, it was the password thing I mentioned.

All the LEDs works, have read about it somewhere, long term it'll be left on so no real stress, just curiosity. Have read about them somewhere, think it was voyage, mebbe I'll ask Walter and see what he knows from voyage.

Sorry bout the numerous posts, I get excited then frustrated! Will try the alsactl store thingy you posted, but will be a couple of days, maybe I'm doing something different to Walter as he mentioned it stays unmuted across reboots,

Password not a bother, just not sure if you knew!

Thanks Idolse, not that I could turn it up tonight but it does sound quite nice and it isn't on my finished system as yet, it's still being built after a hiatus. Will really see what it's like at a mates when I get a chance to get over there. This is really the easiest Linux thing I've done, really have done a great job, will get the word out here once I understand more so folks don't bother you so much!

[PET-240]

And I tried all I could re the coverart, checked and rechecked, curious why. As the art is on the nas that ip wouldnt work. Could it be in the config as it doesn't appear to have art in the "artist,album,etc" line?
Just a silly newbie rambling......

[ldolse]

Cover art isn't supported by mpd - there is a separate web server built into mpdPup, and the cover art gets served from there. So you need to scroll down the MPoD server configuration until you get to artwork, and put the URL of your Alix there, e.g.
http://192.168.100.10/
(change the IP to match yours)

And the second box has to have the filename you use for album covers, e.g.:
folder.jpg

Note it IS case sensitive, so Folder.jpg won't work in the config if you've been using folder.jpg on your filesystem.

Finally you need to be storing a folder.jpg file in the exact same folder as the music tracks for each individual album.

The previous debug info you gave me show the web server is running as it should be, so it's just a matter of following those steps.

[wlowes]

Other points regarding latency ...

Idolse,
Thanks for this information. The BFS scheduler seems like a very smart choice. The sound I am getting from mpdpup is very good indeed.

I believe that an OS stripped to the bare essential improves sound. What I cannot understand is how there could be an influence using my WaveIO card. It is async USB2. One would expect it to be the last buffer before the Dac chip and therefore the only influence on the digital reproduction of sound. While it dramatically improved the situation over the pcm2706 converter it replaced, the OS still makes a difference. I ran WaveIO first on CICS/CPLAY on XP. Here reducing the OS footprint and especially the registry can make a huge difference. Then removing superfluous chips from the MB further improves. I am not really concerned about the science behind it, just the SQ.

I am getting better sound on the ALIX/mpdpup combo. no wonder.. ALIX has no more chips than essential minimum. mpdpup seems to be well stripped and now I learn it has a low latency scheduler that works well with single core processors. I would be most interested in experimenting with YAN's patch on mpd. First priority tho is to learn and perfect these alsa buffer settings.

[PET-240]

Am going to ensure all partitions are removed and reformat CF and see what that does, if I can't remove partitions via windows, will get new card. It has been loaded twice, so will see.
From there I'm hoping that art will work and the mute will stick. Since Walter and I have the same hardware, there should be no differences. Since his unmute sticks I'm going with my end. He also shows more knowledge than I!
Walter, can you please explain what those settings you added at the end of the mpd.conf file do? I grasp the buffer before play, it's the others I am curious on!
Thanks Gents,

Appreciate all the assistance!

[ldolse]

Has anyone seen any discussions regarding those realtime mpd patches? I googled around a bit and couldn't find anything. I'll probably play around with them a bit, but not sure how much validity their changes have. There were a few recommendations on that site that had me scratching my head a bit.

It is interesting how much of a difference the OS/Software can make even with the highest quality implementations. My un-scientific take on it is refactoring/clocking the bits is still 'work', and it seems like giving these devices less work to do helps them live up to their full potential.

@PET-240, take a few deep breaths and relax, at least until you are able to power on the unit again. There isn't any need to do anything as drastic as reformatting, especially with Puppy Linux - if you want to get back to a 'clean' state all you need to do is delete the file on the CF card with the .2fs extension. Don't worry too much about the fact that the unmute seemed to be more reliable for wlowes - I see on diyaudio that it re-muted for him once as well. If the alsactl command doesn't work then worst case I'll add an init script for WaveIO users which unmutes all the audio devices as part of the bootup process.

[wlowes]

PET-240
Seems I spoke too soon about mute. I am finding that in most cases I can reboot and mute sticks. There have been a couple of exceptions. One when I powered off WaveIO without powering down Alix. Another just now when I was mucking about with the router. At any case if you are not getting sound when you should, check the mixer with the alsamixer -c 1 command.

The buffer settings are to cause mpd how to configure alsa. Period_time etc are all explained in this site
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6735?page=0,1
Nowhere can I find a good paper where someone with very current hardware like the WaveIO has experimented to find best settings for sound. Will also vary a little based on whether you typically play 44.1 or 96 etc. If you want to try it, just copy my settings into your mpd.conf, then restart mpd and see if you see a difference in sound and if you like it. When I make a change like this, I comment out the existing setting by putting an # at the start of the line. Worst case if mpd does not work, just delete and restore the original configuration and start over. Its pretty bullet proof.
Walter

[PET-240]

Walter,

Have reflashed card, will re-do setup wizards, then go into conf, unmute and save as per Idolse's save suggestion earlier.
Will then re-add your suggestions in the .conf file.
Shall have a read of that link, see what makes sense.
Wonder if powering Wave off before stop and on after boot would change the mute setup as you suggest? Have asked Lorian if he knows of anything in the XMOS firmware.
Am sure we will figure it out, gotta be easier than windows!
Perhaps we should ask the Alsa crew if mute could be removed or ignored from their code, though I reckon Idolse has a handle on this better than me........just a tad.
Thanks Walter!
Look forward to the developments!

[wlowes]

PET-240
Good luck with the restart. nano as the editor is definitely easier than VI. You might want to take it one step at a time. Get sound. Then make one small change, the buffer 100% before play. restart mpd. I just issue command, killall mpd to stop it then issue mpd to restart.
Last try all my buffer changes all at once.

I tried it both ways, and its not a dramatic difference. But if you get through all that let me know your impressions on sound.

[PET-240]

No joys, Im doing something incorrect here, cant even open the mixer after reflash...

# amixer -c 1
amixer: Mixer hw:1 load error: Invalid argument
# alsamixer -c 1
cannot load mixer controls: Invalid argument
#

# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 1: L10 [Luckit USB Audio 1.0], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
# ps -e
PID TTY TIME CMD
1 ? 00:00:02 busybox
2 ? 00:00:00 kthreadd
3 ? 00:00:00 ksoftirqd/0
4 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:0
5 ? 00:00:00 kworker/u:0
6 ? 00:00:00 migration/0
7 ? 00:00:00 cpuset
8 ? 00:00:00 khelper
9 ? 00:00:00 sync_supers
10 ? 00:00:00 bdi-default
11 ? 00:00:00 kblockd
12 ? 00:00:00 ata_sff
13 ? 00:00:00 khubd
14 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:1
15 ? 00:00:00 kswapd0
16 ? 00:00:00 ksmd
17 ? 00:00:00 fsnotify_mark
18 ? 00:00:00 xfs_mru_cache
19 ? 00:00:00 xfslogd
20 ? 00:00:00 xfsdatad
21 ? 00:00:00 xfsconvertd
23 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_0
24 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_1
25 ? 00:00:00 kworker/u:1
26 ? 00:00:00 kworker/u:2
27 ? 00:00:00 kpsmoused
299 ? 00:00:00 flush-8:0
429 ? 00:00:00 loop1
519 ? 00:00:00 loop0
665 ? 00:00:00 flush-7:1
750 ? 00:00:00 udevd
851 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:2
1501 tty1 00:00:00 sh
1502 tty2 00:00:00 getty
1503 ttyS0 00:00:00 getty
1596 ? 00:00:00 avahi-daemon
1597 ? 00:00:00 avahi-daemon
1607 ? 00:00:00 sshd
1628 ? 00:00:00 udevd
1633 ? 00:00:00 udevd
1662 ? 00:00:00 cifsd
1672 ? 00:00:00 mpd
1678 ? 00:00:00 lighttpd
1686 ? 00:00:00 sshd
1691 pts/0 00:00:00 sh
1775 pts/0 00:00:00 ps-FULL
# ls /mnt/music
Audio Adrenaline Guy Sebastian Matchbox 20
Brooke Fraser Jars of Clay Michael Bublé
Creedence Clearwater Revival Jason Upton Naturally 7
dc Talk Jet SONICFLOOd
DefaultPicture.png Jewel The Corrs
Delirious- Johnny Cash Third Day
Delta Goodrem Leigh Nash Thumbs.db
Eric Clapton-B.B. King Lenny Kravitz Van Morrison
Francesca Battistelli Mandy Moore
# amixer -c 1
amixer: Mixer hw:1 load error: Invalid argument
# alsamixer -c 1
cannot load mixer controls: Invalid argument
# alsamixer
cannot open mixer: No such file or directory
# alsamixer -c
alsamixer: option requires an argument -- 'c'
Usage: alsamixer [options]
Useful options:
-h, --help this help
-c, --card=NUMBER sound card number or id
-D, --device=NAME mixer device name
-V, --view=MODE starting view mode: playback/capture/all
Debugging options:
-g, --no-color toggle using of colors
-a, --abstraction=NAME mixer abstraction level: none/basic

So it sees the card but thats it.
Thoughts?